Exploring the Impact of Emotional States on Fatigue Evolution in Metro Drivers: A Physiological Signal-Based Approach

To investigate the regulatory effects of emotional states on the evolution of fatigue in metro drivers, this study conducts an experimental investigation based on an urban rail transit driving simulation platform. A total of 21 participants complete a 90 min simulated driving task, during which electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are synchronously collected from drivers for fatigue assessment and emotion recognition, respectively. An emotion recognition model based on a multi-scale convolutional neural network (MSCNN) combined with an attention mechanism is constructed. The proposed model uses ECG signals to classify three emotional states—neutral, positive, and negative—where the neutral state is defined as an emotionally undefined baseline that is neither positive nor negative. The model achieves a classification accuracy of 86.96% on the DREAMER dataset. By temporally aligning the emotion recognition results with EEG frequency-domain fatigue indicators, the results show that fatigue exhibits the highest growth and largest fluctuation in amplitude under negative emotions, demonstrating a pronounced fatigue-accelerating effect. Under positive emotions, fatigue decreases considerably and has smaller fluctuations, indicating a certain buffering and restorative effect. In contrast, the neutral emotional state exhibits intermediate and transitional fatigue characteristics. This study innovatively integrates ECG-based emotion recognition with EEG-based fatigue assessment to reveal the mechanisms based on which emotions influence fatigue in metro driving tasks from a physiological perspective. This work provides a basis for emotion-aware fatigue monitoring and safety intervention strategies.